The statements made herein merely provide information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art, and may describe some embodiments illustrating the invention.
Embodiments disclosed herein generally relate to systems or methods for facilitating, capturing, tracking, synthesizing, analyzing, managing and/or utilizing wellsite maintenance data for wellsite equipment. Embodiments disclosed herein also relate to systems or methods for determining degradation conditions of wellsite equipment or predicting residual life of wellsite equipment before, during, and after an oilfield operation. Examples of such oilfield operations include, but are not limited to, hydraulic fracturing, acid stimulation, cementing, etc.
In some embodiments, the wellsite equipment being maintained includes positive displacement pumps, sometimes referred to as reciprocating pumps. Positive displacement pumps are generally used in oilfield operations to pump fluids into a wellbore and the surrounding reservoir.
A given reciprocating pump may comprise one or more pump chambers that each receive a reciprocating plunger. When multiple chambers are enclosed in a reciprocating pump, the reciprocating pump is also called a multiplex pump. In any event, in a typical reciprocating pump, as the plunger is moved in one direction by the rotating crankshaft, fluid is drawn into the pump chamber through a one-way suction valve. Upon reversal of the plunger motion, the suction valve is closed and the fluid is forced outwardly through a discharge valve. The continued reciprocation of the plunger continues the process of drawing fluid into the pump and discharging fluid from the pump. The discharged fluid can be routed through tubing to a desired location, such as into a wellbore.
Typically, multiplex pumps have two sections: (a) a power end, the motor assembly that drives the pump plungers (the driveline and transmission are parts of the power end); and (b) a fluid end, the pump container that holds and discharges pressurized fluid. In triplex pumps, the fluid end has three fluid cylinders. In quintuplex pumps, the fluid end has five fluid cylinders. A fluid end may comprise a single block having all cylinders bored therein, commonly referred to as a monoblock fluid end. Alternatively, each individual cylinder can be bored in a single block, and subsequently multiple blocks are connected together to form an assembled fluid end, commonly referred to as a split fluid end. Embodiments of the current disclosure can be applied to multiplex pumps with monoblock fluid ends, split fluid ends, or other variations thereof.
One particularly useful application of the multiplex pump is hydraulic fracturing, where a fluid is pumped down a wellbore at a flow rate and pressure sufficient to fracture a subterranean formation. After the fracture is created or, optionally, in conjunction with the creation of the fracture, proppants may be injected into the wellbore and into the fracture. The proppant is a particulate material added to the pumped fluid to produce a slurry, which is often very abrasive and/or corrosive. Pumping this slurry at the required flow rate and pressure is a severe pump duty. In fracturing operations each pump may be required to pump up to twenty barrels per minute at pressures up to 20,000 psi. The pumps for this application are quite large and are frequently moved to the oilfield on semi-trailer trucks or the like. Many times a single multiplex pump will occupy the entire truck trailer. These pumps are connected together at the well site to produce a pumping system which may include several multiplex pumps. A sufficient number of pumps are connected to a common line to produce the desired volume and pressure output. For example, some fracturing jobs have required up to 36 pumps.
Since fracturing operations are desirably conducted on a continuous basis, the disruption of a fracture treatment because of a failure of surface equipment is costly, time consuming, inefficient, and unproductive. Further, when such massive pumps are used, it is difficult in some instances to determine, in the event of a pump failure, which pump has failed. Because of the severe pump duty and the frequent failure rate of such pumps, it is normal to take thirty to one hundred percent excess pump capacity to each fracture site. The necessity for the excess pump capacity requires additional capital to acquire the additional multiplex pumps and considerable expense to maintain the additional pumps and to haul them to the site. Therefore, multiplex pumps and other surface equipment are frequently disassembled and inspected before and after each fracture treatment and, in some instances, routinely rebuilt before or after each fracture treatment in an attempt to avoid equipment failures during subsequent fracture treatments.
Traditionally, wellsite maintenance data of multiplex pumps or any other wellsite equipment is recorded manually on paper or in Excel spreadsheets by field engineers at the wellsite. The maintenance data is then communicated from the wellsite to a central data location via telephone or e-mail. Sometimes, the maintenance data is not communicated to the central data location at all or gets lost during transmission. If the wellsite data safely arrives at the central data location, it is traditionally entered into a variety of computer databases by clerks or administrators at the central data location. One prominent issue associated with the traditional method is that the data capturing and transmitting process is not automated and any breakdown in the process may cause delay or failure to the equipment. Another problem with the conventional method is that it is not uniformly executed across operations; therefore, the data received at the center may be incorrect or missing critical information. When the maintenance data is incomplete or inaccurate, it is difficult for the management to determine what maintenance is needed, when maintenance is needed, and which equipment (or a component of equipment) requires maintenance, where the equipment is currently located, which location(s) the equipment has been deployed in its life, etc.
In these respects, the current disclosure aims to provide a method and system to capture maintenance data at the wellsite that addresses the above-mentioned problems, and more specifically the current disclosure relates to methods and systems to facilitate, capture, track, and use wellsite maintenance data so that appropriate maintenance can be prescribed timely, accurately, and effectively, and equipment failure during field operations can be minimized or eliminated. The following detailed description is provided in the context of fracturing operations using triplex pumps. However, it should be noted that embodiments of the current disclosure can be applied to any other oilfield operation or wellsite equipment operation.